Chapter 33

"There's nothing like being able to order yourself to sleep, whatever the crisis," he said. But suddenly he winced as if a blast of bullets had crashed through a window-pane and buried themselves in the wall beside his bed. "What is that?" he gasped "What?" With appalling distinctness he heard a cannonade that seemed as wide-spread as the horizon.

"I was to tell you that the enemy has been attacking along the whole front," the aide explained.

"Attacking! The Browns attacking!" Westerling exclaimed as he gathered his wits. "Well, so much the worse for them. I rather expected they would," he added.

Then through the door which the aide had left open the division chiefs, led by Turcas, filed in. To Westerling they seemed like a procession of ghosts. The features of one were the features of all, graven with the weariness of the machine's treadmill. Their harness held them up. A moving platform under their feet kept their legs moving. They grouped around the great man's desk silently, Turcas, his lips a half-opened seam, his voice that of crinkling parchment, acting as spokesman.

"The enemy seized his advantage," he said, "when he found that our reserves were on the march, out of touch with the wire to headquarters."

Westerling forced a smile which he wanted to be a knowing smile.

"Exactly! Of course their guns are making a lot of noise," he said. "It seems strange to you, no doubt, that they and not we should be attacking. Excellent! Let them have a turn at paying the costs of the offensive. Let them thrash their battalions to pieces. We want them exhausted when we go in to-night."

"However, we had not prepared our positions for the defensive," continued that very literal parchment voice. "They began an assault on our left flank first and we've just had word that they have turned it."

"Probably a false report. Probably they have taken an outpost. Order a counter-attack!" exclaimed Westerling.

"Nor is that the worst of it," said the vice-chief. "They are pressing at other well-chosen points. They threaten to pierce our centre."

"Our centre!" gibed Westerling. "You do need rest. Our centre, where we have the column of last night's attack still concentrated! If anything would convince me that I have to fight this war-alone--I--" Westerling choked in irritation.

"Yes. The ground is such that it is a tactically safe and advantageous move for Lanstron to make. He strikes at the vitals of our machine."

"But what about the remainder of the force that made the charge? What about all our guns concentrated in front of Engadir?"

"I was coming to that. The rout of the assaulting column was much worse than we had supposed. Those who are strong enough cannot be got to reform. Many were so exhausted that they dropped in their tracks. Our guns are at this moment in retreat--or being captured by the rush of the Browns' infantry. Your Excellency, the crisis is sudden, incredible."

"Our wire service has broken down. We cannot communicate with many of our division commanders," put in Bellini, the chief of intelligence.

"Yes, our organization, so dependent on communication, is in danger of disruption," concluded Turcas. "To avoid disorder, we think it best to retreat across the plain to our own range."

At the word "retreat" Westerling sprang to his feet, his cheeks purple, the veins of his neck and temples sculptured as he took a threatening step toward the group, which fell back before the physical rage of the man, all except the vice-chief, his mouth a thin, ashy line, who held his own.

"You cowards!" Westerling thundered. "Retreat when we have five millions to their three!"

"We have not that odds now," replied the parchment voice. "All their men are engaged. They have caught us at a disadvantage, unable to use our numbers except in detail in trying to hold on in face of--"

"I tell you we cannot retreat!" Westerling interrupted. "That is the end. I know what you do not know. I am in touch with the government. Yes, I know--"

This brought fresh alarm into faces which had become set in grim stoicism by many alarms. If the people were in ignorance of the losses and the army in ignorance of the nation's feeling, the officers of the staff were no less in ignorance of what passed over the long-distance wire between the chief of staff and the premier.

"I know what is best--I alone!" Westerling continued, driving home his point. "Tell our commanders to hold. Neither general nor man is to budge. They are to stick to the death. Any one who does not I shall hold up to public shame as a poltroon. Who knows but Lanstron's attack may be a council of desperation? The Browns may be worse off than we are. Hold, hold! If are are tired, they are tired. Frequently it takes only an ounce more of resolution to turn the tide of battle. Hold, hold! To-morrow will tell a different story! We are going to win yet! Yes, we are going to win!"

"It is for you to decide, Your Excellency," said Turcas, slowly and precisely. "You take the responsibility."

"I take the responsibility. I am in command!" replied Westerling in unflinching pose.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

And they filed out of the room, leaving him to his isolation.

A little later, when François came in unannounced, bringing coffee, he found his master with face buried in hands. Westerling was on the point of striking the valet in anger at the discovery, but instead attempted a yawn to deceive him.

"I fell asleep; there's so little to worry about, François," he explained.

"Yes, Your Excellency. There is no need of worrying as long as you are in command," said François; and Westerling gulped at the coffee and chewed at a piece of roll, which was so dry in his mouth and so hard to swallow that he gave up the attempt.

After Marta had learned, over the telephone, from Lanstron of the certain repulse of the Gray assault, fatigue--sheer physical fatigue such as made soldiers drop dead in slumber on the earth, their packs still on their backs--overcame her. Her work was done. The demands of nature overwhelmed her faculties. She slept with a nervous twitching of her muscles, a restless tossing of her lithe body, until hammers began beating on her temples, beating, beating with the sound of shell bursts, as if to warn her that punishment for her share in the killing was to be the eternal concussion of battle in her ears. At length she realized that the cannonading was real.

Hastening out-of-doors, as her glance swept toward the range she saw bursts of shrapnel smoke from the guns of the Browns nearer than since the fighting had begun on the main line, and these were directed at bodies of infantry that were in confused retreat down the slopes, while all traffic on the pass road was moving toward the rear. Impelled by a new apprehension she hurried to the tunnel. Lanstron answered her promptly in a voice that had a ring of relief and joy in place of the tension that had characterized it since the outbreak of the war.

"Thanks to you, Marta!" he cried. "Everything goes back to you--thanks to you came this chance to attack, and we are succeeding at every point! You are the general, you the maker of victories!"

"Yes, the general of still more killing!" she cried in indignation. "Why have you gone on with the slaughter? I did not help you for this. Why?"

No reply came. She poured out more questions, and still no reply. She pressed the button and tried again, but she might as well have been talking over a dead wire.

* * * * *

Though the morning was chill, Mrs. Galland, in a heavy coat, was seated outside the tower door, beatifically calm and smiling; for she would miss rejoicing over no detail of the spectacle. The battle's sounds were sweet music--symphony of retribution. Oh, if her husband and her father could only be with her to see the ancient enemy in flight! Her cheeks were rosy with the happy thrumming of her heart; a delirious beat was in her temples. She wanted to sing and cheer and give thanks to the Almighty. The advancing bursts of billowy shrapnel down the slopes were a heavenly nimbus to her eyes. She breathed a silent blessing on a manoeuvring Brown dirigible. They were coming! The soldiers of her people were coming to take back their own from the robber hosts and restore her hearth to her. Soon she would be seated on the veranda watching the folds of her flag floating over La Tir.

"Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it like some good story?" she said to Marta. "Yes, like a miracle--and there has been a Galland in every war of the Browns and you were in this!"

Having no son, she had given her daughter in sacrifice on the altar of her country's gods, who had answered with victory. Her old-fashioned patriotism, true to the "all-is-fair-in-war" precept, delighted in the hour of success in every trick of Marta's double-dealing, though in private life she could have been guilty of no deceit.

"Marta, Marta, I shall never tease you again about your advanced ideas or about journeying all the way around the world without a chaperon. Your father and my father would have approved!" She squeezed Marta's hands and pressed them to her cheek. Marta smiled absently.

"Yes, mother," she said, but in such a fashion that Mrs. Galland was reminded again that Marta had always been peculiar. Probably it was because she was peculiar that she had been able to outwit the head of an army.

"Oh, that mighty Westerling who was going to conquer the whole world! How does he feel now?" mused Mrs. Galland "Westerling and his boasted power of five against three!"

For the Grays were barbarians to her and the Browns a people of a superior civilization, a superior aristocracy, a superior professional and farming and laboring class. There was nothing about the Browns to Mrs. Galland that was not superior. War, that ancient popular test of superiority in art, civilization, morals, scholarship, the grace of woman and the manliness of man, had proved her point in the high court, permitting of no appeal.

One man alone against the tide--rather, the man who has seen a tide rise at his orders now finding all its sweep against him--Westerling, accustomed to have millions of men move at his command, found himself, one man out of the millions, still and helpless while they moved of their own impulses.

As news of positions lost came in, he could only grimly repeat, "Hold! Tell them to hold!" fruitlessly, like adjurations to the wind to cease blowing. The bell of the long distance kept ringing unheeded, until at last his aide came to say that the premier must speak either to him or to the vice-chief. Westerling staggered to his feet and with lurching steps went into the closet. There he sank down on the chair in a heap, staring at the telephone mouthpiece. Again the bell rang. Clenching his hands in a rocking effort, he was able to stiffen his spine once more as he took down the receiver. To admit defeat to the premier--no, he was not ready for that yet.

"The truth is out!" said the premier without any break in his voice and with the fatalism of one who never allows himself to blink a fact. "Telegraphers at the front who got out of touch with the staff were still in touch with the capital. Once the reports began to come, they poured in--decimation of the attacking column, panic and retreat in other portions of the line--chaos!"

"It's a lie!" Westerling declared vehemently.

"The news has reached the press," the premier proceeded. "Editions are already in the streets."

"What! Where is your censorship?" gasped Westerling.

"It is helpless, a straw protesting against a current," the premier replied. "A censorship goes back to physical force, as every law does in the end--to the police and the army; and all, these days, finally to public opinion. After weeks of secrecy, of reported successes, when nobody really knew what was happening, this sudden disillusioning announcement of the truth has sent the public mad."

"It is your business to control the public!" complained Westerling.

"With what, now? With a speech or a lullaby? As well could you stop the retreat with your naked hands. My business to control the public, yes, but not unless you win victories. I gave you the soldiers. We have nothing but police here, and I tell you that the public is in a mob rage--the whole public, bankers and business and professional men included. I have just ordered the stock exchange and all banks closed."

"There's a cure for mobs!" cried Westerling. "Let the police fire a few volleys and they'll behave."

"Would that stop the retreat of the army? We must sue for peace."

"Sue for peace! Sue for peace when we have five millions against their three!"

"It seems so, as the three millions are winning!" said the premier.

"Sue for peace because women go hysterical? Do you suppose that the Browns will listen now when they think they have the advantage? Leave peace to me! Give me forty-eight hours more! I have told our troops to hold and they will hold. I don't mistake cowardly telegraphers' rumors for facts--"

"Pardon me a moment," the premier interrupted. "I must answer a local call." So astute a man of affairs as he knew that Westerling's voice, storming, breaking, tightening with effort at control, confirmed all reports of disaster. "In fact, the crockery is broken--for you and for me!" said the premier when he spoke again. His life had been a gamble and the gamble had turned against him in playing for a great prize. There was an admirable stoicism in the way he announced the news he had received from the local call: "The chief of police calls me up to say that the uprising is too vast for him to hold. There isn't any mutiny, but his men simply have become a part of public opinion. A mob of women and children is starting for the palace to ask me what I have done with their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. They won't have to break in to find me. I'm very tired. I'm ready. I shall face them from the balcony. Yes, Westerling, you and I have achieved a place in history, and they're far more bitter toward you than me. However, you don't have to come back."

"No, I don't have to go back! No, I was not to go back if I failed!" said Westerling dizzily.

Again defiance rose strong as the one tangible thought, born of his ruling passion. It was inconceivable that so vast an ambition should fail. Failure! He defied it! He burst into the main staff room, where the tired officers regarded him with a glare, or momentary, weary wonder, and continued packing up their papers for departure. He went on into the telegraphers' room. Some of the operators were packing their instruments.

"The news? What is the news?" Westerling asked hoarsely.

An operator who was still at the key, without even half rising let alone saluting, glanced up from the cavernous sockets of eyes unawed by the chief of staff's presence.

"All that comes in is bad," he said. "Where we get none because the wires are down we know it's worse. We've been licked."

He went on sending a message, wholly oblivious of Westerling, who stumbled back into the staff room and paused inarticulate before Turcas.

"The army is going--resisting by units, but going. It has made its own orders!" Turcas said. The other division chiefs nodded in agreement. "Your Excellency, we are doing our best," added the vice-chief, holding the door for Westerling to return to his own office. "The nation is not beaten. Given breathing time for reorganization, the army will settle down to the defensive on our own range. There the enemy may try our costly tactics against the precision and power of modern arms, if they choose. No, the nation is not beaten."

The nation! Westerling was not thinking of the nation.

"You--" he began, looking around from face to face.

Not one showed any sign of softening or deference, and, his mind a blank, he withdrew, driven back to his isolation by an inflexible ostracism. The world had come to an end. Public opinion was master--master of his own staff. He sank down before his desk, staring, just staring; hearing the roar of battle which was drawing nearer; staring at the staff orderlies, who came in to take down the wall maps, and at his aide packing up the papers and leaving him in a room bare of all the appurtenances of his position, with little idea in his coma of despair of the hour or even that time was passing. Finally, some one touched him on the shoulder. He looked up to see his aide at his elbow saluting and François, his valet, standing by with an overcoat.

"We must go, Your Excellency," said the aide.

"Go?" asked Westerling dazedly.

"Yes, the staff has already gone to a new headquarters."

The announcement was the needle prick that once more aroused him to a sense of his situation. He rose and struck his fist on the desk in a pulsing outbreak of energy and stubbornness.

"But I stay! I stay!" he cried. "The enemy is not near. He can't be!"

"Very near, general. You can see for yourself, said the aide.

"I will!" Westerling replied. "I will see how the conspiracy of the staff has made ruin of my plans!"

Again something of his old manner returned; something of the stoic's fatalism flashed in his eye. He shook his head to François, refusing to slip his arms into the sleeves of the coat which François dropped on to his shoulders.

"Yes, I will see for myself!" he repeated, as he led the way out to the veranda. "I'll see what goblin scared my pusillanimous staff and robbed me of victory!"

* * * * *

Every cry of triumph in war is paid for by a cry of pain. On one side, anguish of heart; on the other, inexpressible ecstasy. The Gray staff were oblivious of fatigue in the glum, overpowering necessity of restoring the organization of the Gray army for a second stand. The Brown staff were oblivious of fatigue in the exhilaration of victory.

Had a picture of the sight which the judge's son had witnessed at dawn in the path of the attack and the counter-attack been thrown on the wall of the big lobby room of the Brown headquarters, there might have been less exultation on the part of the junior officers of the staff gathered there. They were not seeing or thinking of the dead. They were seeing only brown-headed pins pushing gray-headed pins out of the way on the map, as the symbol of an attack become a pursuit and of better than their dreams come true--the symbol of security for altar fires and race and nation. They were of the living, in the mightiest thrill that a soldier may know.

No doubt now! No more suspense! Labor and sacrifice rewarded! Fervent thanks to the Almighty were mingled with whistled snatches of wedding marches and popular songs. An aide taking a message to the wire preferred leaping over a chair to going around it. A subaltern and a colonel danced together. Victory, victory, victory out of the burr of automatics, the pounding of artillery, the popping roar of rifles! Victory out of the mire of trenches after brain-aching strain! Victory for you and for me and for sweethearts and wives and children! Aren't we all Browns, orderly and captain, boyish lieutenant and gray-haired general? A taciturn martinet of a major hugged a telegrapher to whom he had never spoken a single unofficial word. Hadn't the telegraphers, those silent men who were the tongue of the army, received the good news and passed it on? Some officers who could be spared from duty went to their quarters, where they dropped like falling logs on their beds. To them, after their spell of rejoicing, victory meant sleep for the first time in weeks without forked lightnings of apprehension stabbing their sub-consciousness.

Fellowship was in the victory, the fellowship which, developed under Partow, who believed that Napoleons and Colossi and gods in the car and all such gentlemen belonged to an archaic farce-comedy, had grown under Lanstron. "The staff reports," began the messages that awakened a world, retiring with the idea that the Browns were grimly holding the defensive, to the news that three millions had outgeneralled and defeated five.

In the inner room, whose opening door gave glimpses of Lanstron and the division chiefs, a magic of secret council which the juniors could not quite understand had wrought the wonder. Lanstron had not forgotten the dead. He could see them; he could see everything that happened. Had not Partow said to him: "Don't just read reports. Visualize men and events. Be the artillery, be the infantry, be the wounded--live and think in their places. In this way only can you really know your work!"

His elation when he saw his plans going right was that of the instrument of Partow's training and Marta's service. He pressed the hands of the men around him; his voice caught in his gratitude and his breaths were very short at times, like those of a spent, happy runner at the goal. Feeding on victory and growing greedy of more, his division chiefs were discussing how to press the war till the Grays sued for peace; and he was silent in the midst of their talk, which was interrupted by the ringing of the tunnel telephone. When he came out of his bedroom, Lanstron's distress was so evident that those who were seated arose and the others drew near in inquiry and sympathy. It seemed to them that the chief of staff, the head of the machine, who had left the room had returned an individual.

"The connection was broken while we were speaking!" he said blankly. "That means it must have been cut by the enemy--that the enemy knows of its existence!"

"Perhaps not. Perhaps an accident--a chance shot," said the vice-chief.

"No, I'm sure not," Lanstron replied. "I am sure that it was cut deliberately and not by her."

"The 53d Regiment is going forward in that direction--the same regiment that defended the house--and it can't go any faster than it is going," the vice-chief continued, rather incoherently. He and the others no less felt the news as a personal blow. Though absent in person, Marta had become in spirit an intimate of their hopes and councils.

"She is helpless--in their power!" Lanstron said. "There is no telling what they might do to her in the rage of their discovery. I must go to her! I am going to the front!"

The announcement started a storm of protest.

"But you are the chief of staff! You cannot leave the staff!"

"You've no right to expose yourself!"

"A chance shell or bullet--"

"You do not seem to realize what this victory means to you. You might be killed at the very moment of triumph."

"I haven't had any triumph. But if I had, could there be a better time?" Lanstron asked with a half-bantering smile.

"You couldn't reach there before the 53d Regiment anyway!" declared the vice-chief, having in mind the fact that the staff was fifteen miles to the rear, where it could be at the wire focus. "You will find the roads blocked with the advance. You'll have to ride, you can't go all the way in a car."

"Terrible hardship!" replied Lanstron. "Still, I'm going. Things are well in hand. I can keep in touch by the wire as I proceed. If I get out of touch then you," with a nod to the vice-chief, "know as well as I how to meet any sudden emergency. Yes, you all know how to act--we're so used to working together. The staff will follow as soon as the Galland house is taken. We shall make our headquarters there. I'm free now. I can be my own man for a little while--I can be human!"

A certain awe of him and of his position, born of the prestige of victory, hushed further protest. Who if not he had the right to go where he pleased in the Brown lines now? They noted the eagerness in his eyes, the eagerness of one off the leash, shot with a suspense which was not for the fate of the army, as he left headquarters.

* * * * *